


The Promise That Life Can Go On

by layna_lass



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Canon, F/M, One-Shots, Other Lives, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, wonderings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-03 15:58:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13344579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layna_lass/pseuds/layna_lass
Summary: A collection of Everlark one-shots





	1. Other Lives

"Do you think there are other lives?" Peeta asks her once.

It's a bad day. They're both too lost in their waking nightmares to pull the other one free, coax each other back, and so they simply hold on and wait for it to pass. 

He asks her this because he wants to know if somewhere, somehow, there is a world that is more than this living hell. He wants to know if there could be a Katniss and Peeta that are not broken. If their ghosts might live again, each extinguished life finding another chance somewhere else.

She thinks about all the paths that have led them here, and she thinks perhaps. 

Perhaps there is a world where Prim's name is not picked in the Reaping, and Katniss must let go of the boy with the bread as he is thrown into the Games without her. He would be too good, too noble to win it. He would save Rue, because he is so much better at saving people than Katniss, and he would not come back to District 12. Katniss's life would go on as it always would have. Forced into the mines, worn away by the endless repetition of days under the stone, choking on coal dust until it suffocated her.

Perhaps there is a world where Gale volunteers in Peeta's place, and Katniss is pitted against her dearest friend, and his arms are the ones that hold her in the dark and the rain. Peeta and his father would take care of Prim, as they promised, while Katniss and Gale would be the star-crossed lovers of District 12. Only they would never pull it off. Without Peeta's steady head and clever tongue, with Gale's fury and fire spurring her on, their rebellion would be seen for what it was and Snow would kill her family, and it would break her as it has now. She would swirl into the oblivion of liquor right along with Haymitch, and Panem would never have its revolution.

Perhaps there is a world where she cannot save Peeta and she is sent back home to face the darkness by herself. She would have to be a mentor, and watch child after child after child be devoured by the Games, their lives taken in the cruelest and most excruciating of ways. She would have to survive night after night, year after year, with their deaths chasing her through her dreams, and no one to soothe her screams when she awoke. She would be sold to anyone that wanted her, her sister's safety holding her to strange beds and rough hands like chains. The madness would eat away at her until she was nothing but sunken eyes and hollow bones.

Perhaps there is a world where Prim's life is long and rich, where Rue still dances through the treetops, where Finnick can raise his son, where Mags dies peacefully in her sleep, where Cinna and Portia and Thresh and Boggs and Darius and Lavinia and Marshall and Messalla and every other tally that she carves into herself over and over again are spared. And perhaps any other outcome would be worth that. 

But in those worlds, Katniss does not know that Peeta's eyelashes are long enough to tangle, or that he can turn an empty page into a memory, a laugh, a treasure. She does not know the way it feels to wake up beside him and, in the seconds before the darkness comes crashing back in, be simply and utterly happy. She does not know how his eyes shine when he teases her, how his voice is rougher in the mornings, how the smell of cinnamon and dill can bring her peace. 

And in this world, where these are the only things that keep her sane, the thought of losing them is unbearable.

So she says, "I don't know," and she takes his hand, and she is so, so grateful that even on the dark days, she does not have to face it alone.


	2. Monster

_I want to die myself._

 

_I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not._

 

In sleep, his voice is gentle and kind, the way it's supposed to be. After the terrors that plagued her the rest of the night-- standing on the Cornucopia while the mutts snapped at her feet, turning to Peeta only to watch him morph into one and lunge for her; Snow's lips, dripping with blood as he laughed over the bodies of the tributes; drowning in roses that burned like the mist and crawled down her throat when she tried to scream-- this one, sweet reminder is what she cannot handle. She wakes with tears on her cheeks, throat burning and sheets wrapped around her legs, and the absence of his arms around her hits her down to her core. 

 

She stuffs her pillow in her mouth to muffle the sobs, wishes she could keep stuffing it until she no longer has to breathe, because it hurts, it hurts, too much. They have taken Peeta not only from her, but from him, too. They have carved him out and robbed him of who he is. 

 

She thinks of the boy with the bread, the boy on the rooftop, after the Capitol had taken away his freedom and his life, clinging so fiercely to this one thing. And because of her, because she failed, he has lost this too.

 

She sobs into oblivion. 

 


	3. The Baker's Boy

At first, Prim doesn't know what to make of him.

She'd always thought-- hoped-- that one day, Gale would be the one to win Katniss's heart, and prove wrong her idea that love was merely a distraction. He was tall and strong and handsome, and he was good to her. He felt like her brother already.

Then came the Games, and the baker's boy with the yellow hair and kind smile, who said he loved Katniss in front of the whole world. Prim didn't know how she felt about that, not when Gale was working so hard to take care of them. Some people said it was a strategy, a ploy to gain support from sponsors, and Prim thought it must be true, because Katniss was horrible at pretending. For a while, it was clear, and she told Gale so: Katniss did not love Peeta. Katniss was trying to stay alive, just as she'd promised.

But then there were moments. Flashes, brief as they were, when Prim knew that Katniss wasn't lying. The way her eyes had shone when he talked about their father, and their first day of school. Her halting, shy tone when she'd told him he didn't have much competition anywhere. The fact that she'd risked her life to get the medicine to save him. Prim knows better than anyone what it looks like to be loved by Katniss.

And even though she sees the pain it causes Gale to watch, even though she wants so bad to soothe him and in return for the kindness he shows them, it is not Gale who brings Katniss home to her. That debt she owes to Peeta.

When they come back, he's like a shadow at her side. They're always touching, laughing, kissing, as if they can't bear to be separated. It's fake. Katniss is tense and scared, and Peeta is weary, and as soon as the cameras leave, they collapse like puppets with their strings cut. Prim finally gets her sister back, the real one, though there are some things she left in the arena and some she brought with. Peeta leaves. Katniss doesn't talk about him. But she tips ever so slightly to the side now, almost unconsciously, as if looking for support that is no longer there.

He lives alone in his grand new house, and Prim thinks how empty it must be, and how lonely he must feel without his family. They don't even come to visit him.

When he brings the bread to Haymitch, he goes into the house, but at the Everdeens', he leaves it on the porch. Prim wonders if he is unwelcome.

Sometimes when Peeta is delivering his daily gift, Prim meets him. There's something hollow in his eyes that wasn't there before, something that's mirrored in her sister's screams and whimpers throughout the night. But he still smiles at her, and asks her how she is, and Prim thinks that he must be very strong to face the darkness by himself. So few people could come out of the arena with goodness left in them.

She wishes she could find a way to say thank you, but there is so much that he's done for her, she can't figure out how. He would've died to save Katniss. Almost did. There's nothing Prim can do that will ever repay him for that.

Prim doesn't know if Katniss loves him, but she hopes she will. Someday. Peeta Mellark deserves to be loved.


End file.
